Batman's Little-Known Co-Creator Gets His Screen Debut

Peter Decherney
, ContributorI write about Hollywood & copyright law, occasionally at the same timeOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Saturday, Hulu will release its first original documentary, Batman & Bill, the story of Bill Finger’s posthumous journey from obscurity to the pantheon of superhero creators. Directed by Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce (The Art of the Steal), the film follows author Marc Tyler Nobleman’s decade-long quest to bring Finger the recognition he deserves as co-creator of the Batman character. Like a film noir detective, Nobleman follows clues and tracks down relatives until all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Eventually DC Comics and its parent company Warner Bros. are forced to acknowledge the inequity. The twists and turns of the story are often surprising, so I’ll try not to give anything away.

The narrative culminates in a copyright dispute (copyright law has become the familiar deus ex machina in stories about artists working in popular culture). Sometimes copyright cases involving works made decades ago run the risk of imposing current ideas about creativity on the past. But in other cases, like this one, copyright can serve as a tool for offering reparations, giving credit and compensation where it is long overdue.

The story begins in 1938, when the first Superman comic book appeared. Artist Bob Kane quickly set out to invent a new superhero to cash in on the demand Superman had created. Kane quickly sketched out “the Bat-man,” a superhero very much in the mold of Superman, with red tights and boots. Kane’s Batman also had wings and a small domino mask. Not completely satisfied, Kane showed his sketches to comic writer Bill Finger, who significantly redesigned the character, giving him most of his distinctive look and approach to fighting injustice.

Finger drew inspiration from The Phantom newspaper comic strip to shape Batman into a much darker character. For example, he suggested replacing the narrow mask with a cowl that had ears and slits for eyes, making the superhero resemble the bat of his namesake. Finger also suggested replacing the wings with a less cumbersome cape, giving him a dark outfit, and placing gloves on his hands to obscure fingerprints. These are all important elements for a vigilante hero of the night like Batman. Finger also came up with the name for Batman’s secret identity, Bruce Wayne, an amalgam of Scottish leader Robert the Bruce and American military officer and politician Mad Anthony Wayne.

Finger went on to write Batman’s backstory (and Robin’s) and devise his many of his notorious villains, including the Joker. Without Finger, Batman would have been without a batcave and a batmobile! Creating Batman was a collaborative process, and there will always be some dispute about the many contributions to the character. But clearly without Bill Finger, Batman would not be the unique and popular superhero that he is.

Yet for close to six decades Bob Kane received sole credit for the Batman character. Before 2015, Finger’s only Batman credit came from writing an episode of the 1960s TV series, and Finger died in 1974 impoverished, with no funeral. Batman & Bill tells the poetic story of how Finger’s son scattered his ashes.

There is nothing unusual about creators in the mid-twentieth century music, movie, or comic businesses toiling in poverty and obscurity as their work found mass audiences and brought in millions. Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, for example, sold all of the rights to their iconic character for $130; their decades-long copyright lawsuits did not bring much relief.